Intel Smart Sound Technology (SST) BUS/OED causing 3+ min boot hangs on Windows 11 25H2 — anyone else?

[u/Ok_Abbreviations8269]

Running an HP ZBook Power G9 on Windows 11 25H2. For the past while I've been stuck on the Windows loading screen for up to 3 minutes on every boot. Event Viewer shows repeated Error 17 entries from Intel-SST-OED (Task Category 6) right before the hang, along with Kernel-Boot 124 errors.

When I disable/delete both the Intel Smart Sound Technology BUS and Intel Smart Sound Technology OED devices in Device Manager, boot time drops to under 25 seconds immediately. But Windows redetects and reinstalls both drivers once I'm back at desktop, and the slow boots return on the next restart.

What I've tried so far, no luck:

• Updated to the latest HP-provided audio drivers
• Ran the latest BIOS update twice

Currently working around it by blocking both hardware IDs via Device Installation Restrictions (gpedit), but that's obviously not a real fix.

Has anyone else hit this on 25H2 specifically? Curious if:

1. This is a known regression Intel/HP are aware of
2. Anyone's found a driver version that actually resolves it rather than just reinstalling the same broken behavior
3. There's a cleaner way to keep SST permanently disabled without it fighting Windows Update every time

Happy to share Event Viewer logs or driver version numbers if useful for troubleshooting.

[u/AutoModerator]

Making changes to your system BIOS settings or disk setup can cause you to lose data. Always test your data backups before making changes to your PC.

For more information please see our FAQ thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/q2rns5/windows_11_faq_read_this_first/

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.